Sex, sexual orientation, and identification of positive and negative facial affect

Sex and sexual orientation related differences in processing of happy and sad facial emotions were examined using an experimental facial emotion recognition paradigm with a large sample (N = 240). Analysis of covariance (controlling for age and IQ) revealed that women (irrespective of sexual orientation) had faster reaction times than men for accurate identification of facial emotion and were more accurate in identifying male faces than female ones, whereas men performed the same regardless of the sex of the face. However, there were no overall sex differences in accuracy. These findings suggest a limited role for sex in the perception of facial affect.     

Temporal variation in Irish suicide rates

Using Irish suicide data for the period 1990-1998, the independent effects of month and day adjusting for age, gender, and calendar year effects and distinguishing between holiday and working Mondays were assessed. The male suicide rate was significantly higher on working Mondays (+31%) and Saturdays (+14%), and during April, June, and August (+17%), after adjustment for the other variables. In contrast, female suicide rates were higher only in August (+35%) and exhibited no day effect. Teenage men had a greater elevation of risk on Saturdays, Sundays, and both working and holiday Mondays than any other group. The study findings should be taken into account in the planning of specialized health care services and helplines for suicidal people. Furthermore, the findings provide support for Gabennesch's (1988) broken promise theory and the relationship between dysfunctions of the serotonergic system and suicidal behavior.     

The construct validity of depressive personality disorder

This study examined the construct validity of depressive personality disorder (DPD: American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Adult psychiatric outpatients (N = 900) underwent comprehensive Axis I and II evaluations and provided data on 4,768 of their 1st-degree relatives. Despite modest overlap, DPD was not redundant with any Axis I or II disorder. Participants with DPD exhibited more Axis I and Axis II comorbidity, and greater psychosocial dysfunction, than participants without DPD. Relatives of participants with DPD had higher rates of mood disorders, alcohol abuse, and antisocial personality. Results are consistent with findings of several other similar investigations. The authors argue that DPD is a valid construct and should be conceptualized as a personality disorder as opposed to a mood disorder.     

Limits of the retrieval-inhibition construct: list segregation in directed forgetting

The authors hypothesized that retrieval inhibition in list method directed forgetting could be improved by presenting a task that maximized the segregation step of the retrieval-inhibition process. In Experiment 1, they presented lists of semantically related words in a list method directed-forgetting task to maximize retrieval inhibition. Contrary to predictions, this manipulation eliminated the directed-forgetting effect. The authors further investigated the results of Experiment 1 in Experiments 2 and 3 by manipulating recall instructions and by presenting lists that contained both a categorized and an unrelated list-half. They found directed-forgetting effects for semantically related word lists when participants were asked to recall only the TBR (to-be-remembered) items but not when participants were asked to recall both the TBF (to-be-forgotten) and TBR items. They also found that directed-forgetting effects were not produced when categorized items were presented in the 1st list.     

Effects of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 on employee attitudes

Much has been stated in the popular press about the effects of the events of 9/11/01 on employee attitudes about work. This study examined a large sample (N = 70,671) of employees of a multinational manufacturer whose annual employee survey data collection was interrupted by the events. After demonstrating measurement equivalence across time and countries, changes in attitudes pre- and post-9/11 were examined. Only negligible differences were found in Job Satisfaction, Supervisor Evaluation, Stress, and Organizational Commitment to Diversity for U.S. employees or for employees worldwide. Demographic differences in response to events were not found. Implications for understanding effects of stressful external events on employee perceptions of work are discussed.     

Social dominance and ethical ideology: the end justifies the means?

Although many social psychological researchers have tried to identify the antecedents of unethical or immoral behavior, investigators have little considered the content of ethical beliefs that associate with important personality variables such as authoritarianism (B. Altemeyer, 1981, 1996) and social dominance orientation (SDO; J. Sidanius, 1993). Previous studies suggest that authoritarianism is associated with the rejection of relativistic standards for moral actions and--to a lesser extent--the idealistic belief that moral actions should not harm others (J. W. McHoskey, 1996). In the present study, 160 New Zealand University students completed measures of SDO (J. Sidanius), Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA, B. Altemeyer, 1981), and two subscales of ethical ideology: Relativism and Idealism (D. R. Forsyth, 1980). As expected, SDO showed a negative relationship with Idealism, a belief that actions should not harm others. But, contrary to expectations, SDO showed no consistent association with relativism, a belief that the moralities of actions are not comparable. On the basis of those findings, people with high SDO might be described as "ruthless" in their pursuit of desirable goals and are indifferent about whether the morality of different actions can be compared or even matter.     

Predictable postural perturbation in premotor and motor components of reaction time

The aim of the present experiment was to study the central control of posture and movement coordination. Subjects' task was voluntarily to raise their arms in response to a visual signal, this movement generating an unloading in which the weight of the load (0 gm, 1500 gm, 3000 gm, or 4500 gm) was known in advance. Thus, subjects could predict the postural perturbation generated by the unloading. Analysis showed an effect of the unloading conditions: in the 0-gm and 1500-gm conditions, reaction time (RT) was longer than in the 3000-gm and 4500-gm conditions. This decrease in RT was exclusively due to a reduction of the premotor time, confirming the posturokinetic coordination in the programming processes. The implications of the decrease in premotor time with the increase of the perturbation for the posture/movement coordination strategies are also discussed.     

Location, location, location: the misprediction of satisfaction in housing lotteries

People tend to overestimate the emotional consequences of future life events, exhibiting an impact bias. The authors replicated the impact bias in a real-life context in which undergraduates were randomly assigned to dormitories (or "houses"). Participants appeared to focus on the wrong factors when imagining their future happiness in the houses. They placed far greater weight on highly variable physical features than on less variable social features in predicting their future happiness in each house, despite accurately recognizing that social features were more important than physical features when asked explicitly about the determinants of happiness. In Experiment 2, we found that this discrepancy emerged in part because participants exhibited an isolation effect, focusing too much on factors that distinguished between houses and not enough on factors that varied only slightly, such as social features.     

Procedural learning in children with developmental coordination disorder

Despite the fact that developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is characterised by a deficit in the ability to learn or automate motor skills, few studies have examined motor learning over repeated trials. In this study we examined procedural learning in a group of 10 children with DCD (aged 8-12 years) and age-matched controls without DCD. The learning task was modelled on that of Nissen and Bullemer. Children performed a serial reaction time (SRT) task in which they were required to learn a spatial sequence that repeated itself every 10 trials. Children were not aware of the repetition. Spatial targets were four (horizontal) locations presented on a computer monitor. Children responded using four response keys with the same horizontal mapping as the stimulus. They were tested over five blocks of 100 trials each. The first four blocks presented the same repeating sequence, while the fifth block was randomised. Procedural learning was indexed by the slope of the regression of RT on blocks 1-4. Results showed that most children displayed strong procedural learning of the sequence, despite having no explicit knowledge about it. Overall, there was no group difference in the magnitude of learning over blocks of trials - most children performed within the normal range. Procedural learning for simple sequential movements appears to be intact in children with DCD. This suggests that cortico-striatal circuits that are strongly implicated in the sequencing of simple movements appear to be function normally in DCD.